


hyacinthus

by thehandsingsweapon



Series: IAFT - old/archived [1]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: M/M, Poet Yuuri, archaeologist victor, queen victoria has been dead for over one hundred slutty years, turns out calling potential employers hags is strongly correlated to unemployment, victor's making yakov an alcoholic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-20
Updated: 2018-03-20
Packaged: 2019-04-05 01:19:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14033019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thehandsingsweapon/pseuds/thehandsingsweapon
Summary: After failing to publish his final collection of poems for his master's degree, Yuuri Katsuki retreats to Minako Okukawa’s summer house on the Thessaly coast. One bright afternoon, a diver emerges from the Aegean sea: hair the color of moonlight, eyes the color of the tides. He’s an archaeologist, Yuuri learns. Not just any archaeologist. He is Victor Nikiforov, whose first book, Beloved, is one of Yuuri's favorite pieces of non-fiction literature. Yuuri’s spent his whole life enraptured by ancient myths, has wandered countless museums to look into the time-washed, smooth faces of Apollo, of Persephone. Only now does he understand why the Oracles gave such dire warnings to the family of Psyche; why they ever insisted Cupid was the one god all other gods feared. Victor unlocks something that saturates his work; makes Yuuri understand why Sappho ever wrote 'let me tell you this: someone in some future time will remember us.'Artifact 0.A: Victor Nikiforov and Yakov Feltsman discuss his recent insults towards a trustee of the British Museum. Does anyone remember that Apollo loved Hyacinthus so much he wouldn't let Hades claim him? The answer is no, and that's the whole problem.





	hyacinthus

**Author's Note:**

> a prequel to my fic for the [born to make art history](http://borntomakearthistoryzine.tumblr.com) zine.

**0.A** **  
**  


“Vitya.” Only Yakov can manage to make a family nickname sound like an insult. “Do you want to tell me why you thought it was a good idea to call one of the trustees of the British Museum a _toothy old hag clinging to the incorrect ideals of the 19th century with both claws?_ ”

Victor is miserable. It’s been cold and rainy in London, and now that he’s finished _Beloved’s_ book tour, he’s not quite sure what to do next. Beyond the fact that his thesis has been published and is making waves, or that he was top of his doctoral class at Cambridge, this one _tiny_ outburst with a CBE has closed an incredible number of doors, and now he’s the only one of his peers who doesn’t have a job offer lined up for this next phase of his career. “... She said she’d been forwarded my work and wanted to clarify the board’s position on the Parthenon marbles, in case of any press, because of the Byron commentary.” He took the meeting, of course; even Victor knows enough to know it’s impolitic to decline someone who’s got letters after their name that were granted by the Queen. “I told her that I’ve read the Museum’s official position several times, that I think it’s a lousy excuse for empire, that they’ve been stealing little pieces of culture from all over the world for years. That their position is not only indefensible, but also laughably out of touch.” He pauses, imagines that Yakov must be counting to ten, because the yelling hasn’t commenced yet. “... It went downhill from there, because I pointed out that for a collection that argues its merits on the basis of its diversity, the curators do a sorry job presenting anything other than a heteronormative narrative that isn’t always supported by actual fact, that they’re all terrified of offending delicate British sensibilities, and that Queen Victoria has been dead for over a hundred slutty, slutty years, and it’s time the planet got to move the fuck on … Yakov, are you still there?”

“I am,” grunts Yakov. “I poured myself a drink. I’m trying to decide if the Russian language has sufficient vehicles for telling you how much of an idiot you are.” Victor’s used to criticism from Yakov, but somehow it never stings any less than the first time, and he grits his teeth to bear the subsequent lecture he receives about professionalism and how he has to learn how to respect others in his field if he expects to be allowed to work in it. “Even when you disagree with them,” Yakov mutters. “ _Especially_ when you disagree.”

“I can’t sit here and be complicit while we make the same mistakes!” Victor snaps. “Apollo and Daphne. Bernini. It’s four hundred years old. Thanks to its existence, we get four hundred years of remembering Apollo’s primary love affair as being with a nymph who rejected him and got turned into a tree. Meanwhile, there’s actual erotic red vase art of his lover Hyacinthus, in the embrace of Zephyrus no less, and --”

“I’m the one who showed you that piece,” Yakov interrupts. “And I’ve read your thesis, Vityusha, I don’t need it in lecture format --” 

“Where is the modern masterpiece for Apollo and Hyacinthus, Yakov? For the Spartan prince who was his _actual lover?_ ” Victor asks. His voice cracks on the edge of his frustration; Yakov and his advisor both warned him that his research topic might have been too personal. Now here he is, feeling a tell-tale prick in his eyes. “... If you’re someone like me, Yakov, you can’t walk into a museum and find yourself there. It’s not possible. Maybe you get close with _The Sleeping Hermaphroditus,_ until you realize that the first person to snatch it up after rediscovery was Cardinal Borghese, and if you think too long about _that_ while you walk around the Villa to take in the rest of its collection, you’ll realize many of the highlights are romanticized rapes, and you’ll see no mention of the fact that Scipione was probably gay and that Pignatelli wasn’t his _close friend_ … but no, it’s a wonderful collection. From such a great Catholic, too.” Victor can’t help but retreat into the safe defense of sarcasm. “Yakov, I’ll go out of work and hungry and homeless before I participate in this for another generation. Did you know the University Press passed on my thesis? Karpisek had to forward it to a Literature Chair to get it published outside of the university. That’s the real _Beloved_ story _._ I left Russia to get away from this sort of shit. I can’t do it. Don’t ask me to.”

Yakov is silent for a moment, long enough that Victor checks his phone again, just to be sure he hasn’t been hung up on. “Vityusha,” he says, gently this time, as though Victor’s once again an excitable child looking over pottery in his study, “If you hold every institution on earth to a standard you already know they’re not meeting, how, exactly, do you expect the work to get started?” It’s a question Victor doesn’t have the answer to, and Yakov must know that. He lets the silence stretch until it’s almost uncomfortable. And then he says this:

“We found a shipwreck in Thessaly,” Yakov grunts. “Dives are scheduled for the summer. You’ll take a _Visiting Scholar_ title and frankly lousy pay, and in return you’ll try to control your temper so that I can keep my promise to your father and attempt to make sure you make something out of yourself.” _Thessaly,_ Victor echoes. He can hear Yakov resisting a smile. “Walk where the Myrmidons stood. Stand in the places where Achilles must have met Patroclus, if you like.”

“... Alright,” Victor hears himself agree. The sharp knot in his chest loosens, just a little. _Alright._

 

_\- - -_

>  
> 
> **Excerpt, Introduction** **  
> ** from _Beloved_ _  
> _ by Victor Nikiforov
> 
>  
> 
> For the past four years, this book has been a labor of love, and perhaps some will find it all-too-flawed for that very reason. I am not here to tell my readers that Alexander the Great was gay by our standards. Almost certainly, the label as it exists today would befuddle an ancient audience whose sexual proclivities existed within a complex intersection of body worship, role expectations, coming of age rites, and social class, rather than our matrix of orientation and expression. What I am here to do, however, is to highlight the lies of omission that have been told by anthropologists, archaeologists, and art historians for centuries: to point out how often instances of same-sex love have been, at best, recast by scholars as _intimate friendships,_ and at worst, censored entirely _._ The scholarship of the Regency and Victorian eras rarely requires the explicit confirmation of the affairs of heterosexual couples, often accepting them at face-value, a courtesy unimagined for those of the same sex. That multiple authors of antiquity considered Achilles and Patroclus lovers, for instance, is not a fact a student of Homer stumbles upon until well into his graduate studies, and even then the topic is contentious.
> 
> It is strange the way a modern audience expects the explicit confirmation of the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus; stranger still the way anthropologists rush with lurid glee to the bedrooms of these historical figures, and there insist upon physical evidence, as though the act of sex were the only proof of real love. Nevermind that we watch Achilles weep as he weeps for no one else. Still they have the audacity to say: **it is not enough.**
> 
> Herein, then, is my flawed attempt to restore to these ancient figures their true histories. It is my deepest hope that, by letting them see the light of day once more, I will have taken steps towards a modern world that dares to do the same for the living.


End file.
